The ferry tokens

Source: an original fiction extract.

At three on Monday afternoon, Simon arrived at the riverside kiosk to help his cousin prepare for the new ferry season. His first task was to count the old brass tokens and place them in bags of twenty. The tokens were kept in a square tin beneath the counter. His cousin gave him a green notebook for recording the totals and asked him to work at the table by the window. Outside, the ferry was tied to a blue post. The first public crossing would take place at eight the following morning.

The tokens made a bright, uneven sound as Simon tipped them onto the table. Some had sharp edges to their lettering; others were worn almost smooth. Each carried the outline of a boat on one side and a number on the other. He arranged them in rows, moving the damaged ones to a separate pile. His cousin said they could still be used if the machine accepted them. Simon had assumed that the ferry would take payment by phone. She said it did that too. The tokens remained because people still wanted them.

A woman knocked at the kiosk window while he was counting. She held a token threaded onto a piece of string. She had found it in her late husband's coat and wanted to know whether it belonged to this ferry. His cousin examined the design and said it was an older version. Simon fetched one from the table to compare. The boat on the woman's token had a different roof, and the letters were smaller. She said her husband had taken the ferry to work before the road bridge was built.

They looked through a folder of photographs until they found the old boat. The woman recognised it immediately. She pointed to the bench near the stern and said that was where he always sat when they crossed together on Sundays. Simon could see only a narrow wooden seat in a blurred picture, but she described the view from it precisely: a warehouse clock, a row of poplars and a church tower that appeared just before landing. None of those things was visible in the photograph. He listened while his cousin wrote down the boat's name for her.

After she left, Simon returned to his rows of tokens. They still needed counting, and he had lost his place. He began again, checking each group before closing its bag. This time he kept one of the older designs aside to ask about, rather than putting it among the damaged pieces. Through the window, the ferry shifted gently against its rope. In the morning it would carry people whose reasons for crossing he would probably never know. He wrote the final total in green ink, then added a small drawing of the roof on the token he had saved.

Refer only to the first paragraph. Choose one answer for each item. Write the four letters in order, labelling them 1 to 4.